Transparency in Electronic Voting : the Great Challenge

Chantal Enguehard (1)

1 LINA - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Nantes Atlantique

Voting must respect several criteria to be democratic. In this paper we determine whether electronic voting can simultaneously protect secrecy, be transparent, accessible and resistant to intimidation and fraud.We consider different types of e-voting ranging from Direct Recording Electronic voting systems to remote internet voting. We show that there are major contradictions between the constraints of democratic elections and the possibilities offered by computers. In particular, electronic voting appears to make massive and invisible fraud possible to achieve by small groups of people with the necessary skills. At present, it is not a realistic possibilility to design an electronic application, remote or not, that could cope with the demands of democratic elections.

Mots clés: transparency; Democratic elections; electronic voting; DRE; VVAT; fraud; accessibility; intimidation; vote selling; internet remote voting; remote voting; transparency.

Mots clés: élections démocratiques; vote électronique; ordinateurs de vote avec bulletin dématérialisé; OdV-BD; ordinateurs de vote avec bulletin matérialisé; OdV-BM; fraude; accessibilité; coercition; pression; vente de vote; vote par internet; vote par correspondance; transparence.

Domaines: Ordinateur et société [cs.CY]; Sciences de l'information et de la communication; Science politique; Droit

Chantal Enguehard. Transparency in Electronic Voting : the Great Challenge. IPSA International Political Science Association RC 10 on Electronic Democracy. Conference on “E-democracy - State of the art and future agenda”, Jan 2008, Stellenbosch, South Africa. pp.édition électronique. ⟨halshs-00409465⟩